ABSTRACT
Three Tall Women, the New York City premiere of Edward Albee’s full-length 1991 drama at the adventurous Vineyard Theater downtown, is said to mark the return from virtual oblivion, or critical disfavor, of a once-renowned dramatist. But that’s an awfully New York judgment. Three Tall Women was first produced in Vienna, and Vienna does exist; so do all the other theaters in Europe and America that have been glad to produce Albee plays over the last twenty years or so. Yet New York, letting its provincialism and short memory show, has discarded the playwright who wrote Zoo Story (1960), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Seascape (1975)—as if to say, “All well and good. But what have you done for us lately?”
